well, to answer both, I've designed it to flip over (motors and caster wheel) and to have room for another level which i have sitting in my room. I asked my dad to ask for a fovour at a local machine shop of which he knew the owner of and he just gave my dad a scrap piece of aluminum and i drew out my plan (just two circles) and i sent it back there and he popped it on the CNC plasma cutter, and voila, two perfect circles. The slits were made by me and my good 'ol dremel.

I initially asked to get them milled for an even more perfect cut but for just two discs it would've costed about 100 bucks for the work (which is unbelievably overpriced, but i guess it takes into account that there is only a few guys trained to do that kind of work efficiently and perfectly).

i made it so if i need to have more stuff on it i can flip over the whole thing and move the caster to the underside, giving it more ground clearance and better wieght distribution (instead of the motor mounts being pulled down they will pushed down onto). This in turn will also give me more space for another level and more room for gadgets and stuff.

PS the picture "bottomsideup.jpg" shows a good view of what it may look like.

oh, thats what you mean. I was basically saying if i wanted to do quick and simple upgrades that these options would be availiable to me, not a flipping over kind of robot... but actually that wouldn't be a bad idea to incorporate that kind of system into a later robot, maybe a turtle robot (no pun intended).

PS more pictures will be coming either later this evening of the bot put together or tommorow

well to get started into etching i would reccomend getting some blue copy paper? the paper you iron and it transfers.or a laser printer (or if yuor circuit isnt to complicated) you can use a sharpie. for the etchant the cleanest one i know of would be ammonium persulphate. i try to steer clear of ferric chloride and ferric sulphate. its just a matter of preferance.

well if you've got a laser printer you can use gloss paper (if your using inkjet use blue copy paper). and ive heard somewhere (i think it was instructables) that you can use magazine paper?? i might test this sometime

for the etchant, ammonium persulphate is probably the cleanest but the most expensive. i would stick with ferric chloride as it is quite cheap in comparison. magazine paper is fine paper as a cheap alternative, yes.

wow i really gotta try that, and i spoke to my electronics teacher today and yes you can print it onto any glossy paper with a laser printer (most photocopiers!!). but the only problem i can see with magazine paper is that it might jam. but yes, whatta ya mean ammonium persulphate is expensive? its about $10aud which is about 6usd?? for 400g of the stuff which will make you approx 1 and a half liters of etchant! and its reuseable!